Legends contain many text items that have properties that can be modified. For example, the title of the legend can be bold and a different color than the labels in the legend. You can include multiple text items in a single legend item. The following text items are available in a legend:
- Title
- Group Layer Names
- Layer Names
- Headings
- Labels
- Descriptions
With the exception of Title, each text item can be turned on or off for individual legend items. The text for these items is part of how the layer is symbolized. Not all text items apply to all layer symbology types. For example, the Descriptions and Headings text items are available for unique values symbology, but not for proportional symbols. Update the text in the Symbology pane as part of the layer symbology. Update the appearance of the text at the legend or legend item level.
Change the appearance of a text item in a legend
Text in legends use the font and appearance of the legend style item they were created from. Once a legend has been created in a layout, you can update text items.
Modify text for all legend items
To change the appearance of all the text in a legend, complete the following steps: :
- In the Contents pane, right-click the legend and click Properties
to open the Element pane. - At the top of the Element pane, click the drop-down arrow next to the Legend text, and select a text item, such as Labels, from the list.
The text properties for all the legend item labels appear.
- Make any adjustments to the text symbol properties.
Modify text for a single legend item
To modify text of one legend item only, follow these steps:
- In the Contents pane, highlight a legend item, right-click, and choose Properties to open the Element pane.
Press Shift and click to highlight multiple legend items from a legend to change their text appearance together.
- At the top of the Element pane, click the drop-down arrow next to the Legend text, and select a text item, such as Headings, from the list.
- Make any adjustments to the text symbol properties.
Resizing legend text
Legend text can resize automatically when the legend boundaries are adjusted. Whether or not the text is automatically adjusted depends on the legend's fitting strategy. The Adjust columns and font size and Adjust font size fitting strategies both resize the text as the legend size changes. For all other fitting strategies, the font size does not change automatically.
Fitting strategies that automatically resize text each have a Minimum font size setting in the Element pane. This is separate from the font size for the legend text. When using these fitting strategies, the legend starts with set font size for all text. If all the legend elements and all the text don't fit, the text automatically shrinks until it fits. However, the text cannot shrink below the set Minimum font size. Conversely, when you resize the legend to be larger, the text will not grow past the Font size set in the Element pane for that specific text item. So if the heading font size is set to 20 pt, the font size can be reduced to ensure the text fits in the allotted space, but the font size cannot increase larger than 20 pt. To increase the text size, adjust the font size in the text symbol properties.
Add or modify legend title text
The default legend title text is Legend and is turned off.
To turn on the legend title and change the title text, complete the following steps:
- In the Contents pane of a layout, right-click the legend and click Properties to open the Element pane.
Be sure to click the legend element, not a legend item. Legend items have different properties.
- In the Element pane, click the Options tab .
- In the Legend group, check Show to display the legend title in the legend.
- Optionally, update the title text.
Enable word wrapping
Legend labels and descriptions can be wrapped to new lines of text. By default, legend columns are wide enough to accommodate all the label and description text for the widest legend item on one line. You can enable word wrapping to flow text onto another line using standard character breaks once the text has exceeded a set width. This is useful when you have long legend labels or descriptions.
You can wrap the legend item labels, the legend item descriptions, or both. Word wrapping is enabled at the legend level, so it applies to all legend elements. When either label or description wrapping is enabled, wrapping is automatically enabled for headings and layer names too. They wrap to the total width of the item. Legend titles also wrap to the total width of all the columns.
To enable word wrapping, complete the following steps:
- In the Contents pane, right-click the legend and click Properties to open the Element pane.
Be sure to click the legend element, not a legend item. Legend items have different properties.
- In the Element pane, click the Legend Arrangement Options tab
. - Under the Word wrapping heading, check Labels or Descriptions to wrap the appropriate text item.
- Adjust the value in page units for the text to wrap by changing the number next to Labels or Descriptions. For example, set it to wrap all labels wider than 1 inch.